Cannon
Cañón de metal
- Date
- c. 1288 · confidence medium
- Place
- Heilongjiang (Yuan China); in Europe, Florence, 1326
- Credited to
- Yuan China; in Europe: anonymous Florentines and Walter de Milemete
- Field
- Conflict
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A closed bronze or iron tube that fires a projectile by the explosion of confined gunpowder. The Heilongjiang hand cannon (1288) is the oldest surviving example; it appears in Europe in 1326.
Transmission from China to the Mongols to the Islamic world to Europe took barely 40 years; Europeans cast cannon using bell-founding techniques.
What it led to
- the obsolescence of the high wall and the birth of bastion fortification
- the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the centralisation of states holding a monopoly on artillery
- naval artillery and European oceanic dominance